By
Wilson Japhet Fofano


This is written as a rejoinder to a clear hatchet job published by Desert Herald Newspaper. It is not to join issues with the tabloid, but to respond in all soberness that despite wishes to the contrary, Crowther Seth is very much still the Deputy Governor of Adamawa State and is enjoying the full confidence of his boss Rt. Hon. Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, the Executive Governor of Adamawa State.
There is no iota of truth in the smear of character that the Herald Newspaper chose to execute on Chief Crowther Seth who has not changed from being his reserved self in all these years, from four years as Executive Chairman, another four years with Admiral Murtala Nyako as Commissioner and in his private life as a businessman, and a reputable Traditional Title Holder of the Bachama Kingdom, up to his current elevation by His Excellency, Governor Ahmadu Fintiri and the Adamawa electorate.

This last publication is another dose of the tabloid's putrid poison served the public in the guise of journalism. What a malady of hateful conjectures, which expressly expose the plot and conspiracy of the political class and enemies of the state in encouraging discord and anarchy. The person of Chief Crowther Seth would not succumb to such threats and undue pressure regardless of the barrage of attacks.
It is a well known adage that ‘when the witch flies past at night and the child dies in the morning’, the witch stands known to have taken life and therefore accused. The hands behind the writer are as well known as their motives. The trajectory here is, who are the paymasters for this hack job of the desperation to pull down the Deputy Governor and what is their motive?

Therefore, the article in the Herald is a result of a "pull him down syndrome” taken too far - bottled hatred whose cap came off to save the writers from brain hemorrhage. Ordinarily it should deserve no response since the paper itself is cheap toilet tissue, which for years was unable to become a true national tabloid, and the author, a fly undeserving of being chased after with a sledge hammer. How can the Herald develop into a national tabloid, when its writers feast as they do in cannibalistic fashion, on the blood of innocent hard working people.

Concretely, Chief Crowther Seth remains Deputy Governor of Adamawa State, enjoying the full confidence of his boss, the Executive Governor. Evidence of this is found in the special concerted efforts being carried out by Governor Fintiri in Lamurde, Numan and Demsa Local Governments, the direct constituencies of the Deputy Governor to deliver democracy dividends as promised. The projects in these Local Governments attest to the fact that Crowther Seth is indeed a valid and credible half of the Fintiri Mandate. In fact it is the effective delivery of Governor Fintiri on this mandate with a most accountable Government and providing qualitative infrastructural projects beyond the wild expectations of observers. That Fintiri is the game changer is the factor attracting this flack on Deputy Governor Crowther Seth.

Is it not a contradiction that while the Herald claims that the Deputy Governor's statutory budgetary allocation has been slashed, the rag tag paper goes on to note a reduction in service staff and visitors, is this not logical to all budget cuts? Is there any tier of Government that has not suffered a reduction in budgetary allocation? Is the allocation to Crowther Seth as personal spending money or official running cost? This deliberate disinformation is an induction that this hack writer and his group are wicked and are an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

If we can cast our minds back, we will have no difficulty in recollecting that it was the same iniquitor mindset that unpatriotically despised and swept away the unity enjoyed by the people of Numan Federation that the dubious political elite conspired and to terminate, and failed woefully. Chances are that we would establish a culture of unity, integrity, merit and sustainable development; which political turn coats and avaricious and predatory elements wish to effectively derail to the detriment of the Numan Federation’s match to greatness.

Let’s set this straight; it’s such a shame that many of our elite are prepared to sacrifice civility and fairness on the alter of political or sectional interest. Nothing else would justify the unwholesome call for the head of the Deputy Governor and the laughable effort to hold him responsible for the carnage and conflict between the Lunguda and Waja. If we are not mindful, we are going to pay a huge price for this.

While we have no difficulty admitting that the times are indeed hard and clouded by long time mutual distrust, it also amount to intellectual fraud to deny the frantic dogged stand of the Deputy Governor in the midst of a crises that predates him through a warped thinking.
If we are honest with ourselves, we should admit our collective failure in accommodating and tolerating each other under the desire of the shackles that the political elite has refused to honestly address because doing so will dislodge the unholy privilege structure that has been used to sentence the great majority of our people to subsistence and at times, sub-human existence.

Be that as it may, and in spite of the cacophony that clamors for the head and office of the Deputy Governor and to cast aspersion on the effectiveness and integrity of Chief Crowther Seth, I want to believe, we don’t need a particular ethnic group or individual to ask the question for his removal, nor do we need somebody elsewhere to ask the question. Who will cast the first stone? The only evidence we need is the stinking opulence and conspiracy of the entire political class. Enough of the grandstanding and throwing of stones, the posturing must stop; receiving applause while throwing stones from glass houses can last only for as long as it takes to pull a wool over the eye of the spectator. Chief Crowther Seth is not the problem. The problem is the conspiracy of political gladiators to perpetuate the inequitable structures of privileges that confer undeserved power and influence on its people.

A stone thrown on Chief Crowther Seth in his capacity as the Deputy Governor is a stone thrown to the Bwatiye in particular and indeed all other ethnic groups of the Numan Federation, if at all its unity of purpose does and still exists.
Regrettably, my decisions to dignify the proponent of this campaign by refuting its concocted falsehood, fallacious statement and illogical reasoning, knowing fully well it will be met with mischievous maneuvers of truth, the fraudulent manipulations of historical facts and a contemptuous arrogance of ignorance through the conjecture of all sorts of primordial myths to convince the reader. One sometimes wonders whether these like-minded exponents of the campaign against Chief Crowther Seth have a sense of history; on the contrary they seem to suffer certain historical amnesia. What I find abhorrent is the tendency to manipulate our peace process through blackmail by a clique by means of this fruitless attempt to rubbish the dignity and integrity of the Deputy Governor.

What indeed warrants the smear on the personality or Mr. Seth is his refusal to submit to their blackmail as they, in frustration rehash the much settled conflict between the Longuda and the Waja out of the writer's thirst for the blood of the innocents. The ploy is to undermine the cordial relationship between the two political leaders, cause disaffection and derail the stability of the State that Governor Fintiri has worked so hard to restore. Indeed the aim is to cause the sense of belonging of the Bwatiye land on the Fresh Air ticket to be voided, and we see the handiwork of enemies of the Fintiri Regime in effort to promote clandestine 2023 posture by hacking at one leg of the firm tripod. They are doomed to fail. It is one solid ticket, delivering on the mandate, with Hon. Crowther Seth responding diligently to the full credit and disposition of his boss, Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri.
If the Desert Herald has even a modicum of professional decency, it should offer its readers this article as a right of reply.

Wilson Japhet Fofano wrote this from
Human, Adamawa State

Adamawa!

Jst pile of high sounding Grammar, nothing More